Search engine results adjust constantly as Google evolves. Google has said that they take into account over 200 factors when…

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Content Marketing and SEO: how to write the right stuff

SEO still exists, but for the vast majority of businesses ( who aren’t HUGE corporations with BIG advertising budgets ) the return on investment isn’t there anymore.

The amount of effort it takes to get you website doing well in search results has increased.

And most businesses don’t have the amount of money needed to outsource all the work that’s involved.

And as well, the chances of making it onto page one for the shorter lucrative search phrases has decreased, with big corporations and publishers knocking everyone else down further.

If you can do it, it’s still very worthwhile making it onto page one of the search results for things to do with your business.

But what’s the solution ?

The solution: target a good number of longer and more specific phrases. The competition to make it onto page one is less, so you have a better chance of getting there, and the phrases are very specific which encourages more clicks to your website.

This leads into content marketing – putting good information out there that helps people solve their problem ( and as a sideline – lets them know that YOU can help them ).

In the case of SEO they’ve been searching for a solution and clicked on your search result.

There are 3 things that need to be done well …

Find a search phrase that enough people are typing, where you can the competition onto page one.

Make sure that you set up the website page as well as you can ( and related site-wide things too ).

Here’s a good solution for people with WordPress websites …

It provides a Keyword Research tool right on the page you’re editing, analyses what you write based on the phrase you’re targeting and guides you though all the steps of formatting the page for SEO.

Squirrly also handles the site-wide factors in a similar way to other SEO plugins and provides website audits that include help with external factors ( like backlinks ).

The Squirrly plugin’s free from here, or you can upgrade to get the better one ( which I did ).

Notice this …

When you type content marketing and seo in Google trends, you get this graph …

In the last 6 months since mid-2017 interest has been going up and up.

I can speculate that it’s for a couple of reasons that each coincide with that trend.

The weight of Google’s ranking factors has shifted more towards on-website content and less on external factors. Advances in their machine learning that understands the meaning of what’s written has evolved. People who know a bit about SEO have become more interested in writing good content.

People in general are starting to realise that it takes a full marketing strategy to close someone on an offer. There was a good stretch of time earlier when this wasn’t the case and selling something was different to how you’d approach it off the internet. The internet is now duplicating the real-life the sales routine.

So what you write about is important for 2 reasons …

Good, relevant articles targeting longer, more specific phrases that gets you found in search results more often.

A full content marketing strategy.

Creating regular content as the basis of an entire marketing channel and strategy is setting you up for the long haul ( without being dependent on a search engine ).

Writing good content

Just as relevance of an article is important for SEO it’s just as important for any marketing strategy. Think of a website page as part of a conversation, because more than likely there was something said in an add or mention that resulted in the person arriving on the page.

A page that is sequitur and continues the on the specific thing mention earlier will keep someone moving along and not dropping off.

There’s a lot to be written about a full content marketing strategy, which will be covered in a later post.